


All the King's Men

by engmaresh



Series: Team Two Sugars [1]
Category: Almost Human
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Gen, Near Future, Post-Battle, Robots gaining Sentience, Sacrifice, disaster management, hints of jorian, richard has a heart of gold, richard loves his MX, synthetic soul, this will probably end up an AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-13 03:59:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1211881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/engmaresh/pseuds/engmaresh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Vaughn's XRNs storm the precinct, Richard Paul's MX is badly damaged. By chance, a synthetic soul falls into his possession. What will he do with it?</p><p>  <i>“Detective, what you are about to do is illegal.”</i><br/><i>“Shut up.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	All the King's Men

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flippingthevan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flippingthevan/gifts).



> Everything here is pure speculation about what will happen in the show. Future episodes will likely render this 100% an AU.  
> Thanks to [flippingthevan](http://flippingthevan.tumblr.com/) over at tumblr, whose Richard Paul feels and meta inspired this.

Maldonado tasks Richard to bring the souls down to evidence, since he’s one of the few cops still mostly intact. The tiny vials in their transparent aluminium case are surprisingly heavy, and despite the analgesic, the bullet graze on his bicep throbs as he hefts its weight in both hands. He holds the case close to his chest, curls his arms around it because mostly intact or not, it’s been a long night and he may also have a concussion, so he doesn’t trust himself to not list over and drop at any moment.

Roombas swoop around on the floor, sweeping up broken glass and mopping up blood and bodily fluids. They make the precinct look less like hell but they turn his straight route to evidence into meandering path that takes him past trashed cubicles and piles of rubble. They also beep angrily and head-butt his boots at him every time he walks into a cleaning zone.

A whistling Roomba shuffles him off into a path that takes him past the conference rooms, giving him an excellent view of Kennex, his lazy ass pressed up against the glass as he takes nap while everyone else around him is still hard at work. His DRN actually has Kennex’s head propped up on one thigh, while blue lights run up and down his face as he hunts down the rest of the rogue bots for Maldonado. Someone, Kennex probably, has draped a jacket around his shoulders to hide the loss of his arms.

Richard shakes his head and walks on. As he get gets deeper into the building, the number of people he sees moving about decreases. Only essential staff is down here, everyone else has either left or is up front, busy with disaster management. Evidence however, is fully staffed, categorizing and tagging whatever parts of the XRNs they’ve been able to identify.

Half of them are there for security, and about half a dozen guns rise as he approaches.

“Hey,” he says, carefully balancing the case on his forearms and spreading his hands to show that he’s unarmed. “I’m just here with the souls.”

“He’s good,” says detective Shao, waving down their colleagues’ guns. “Maldonado called. He’s cleared to be here.”

She helps him set the case down on the table. Close up, he can see a nasty cut on her forehead, partially hidden by her bangs. 

“Hey, Shao.” He points at his own face, gesturing at the area of her injury. “You got that checked?”

“I’m fine, Paul. Thanks for asking though.”

“You don’t have anyone to take over from you? You look beat.”

“You’re one to talk, Mr. Macho,” she says, punching him lightly in his uninjured shoulder. “How’s your arm?”

His grimace is only partially faked. “It was a close call, but I’ll live.”

They laugh, and Shao pushes her lank hair out of her face as she props her hip up against the table. “Coffee machines survived?”

“None of those upstairs,” he tells her. “Cafeteria ones might still work.”

She makes a face. “Ugh, that’s so far away. Hey, Rama, get me a coffee.”

“Go fuck yourself, Shao,” grumbles an officer down the table, inspecting an XRN head. “I’m done. I’m finishing up this bitch, then I’m going home.”

Shao gives him the finger in return, and makes another face at Richard. “Blargh. I wish they’d left the Emexes online.”

Richard mmms in agreement. Walking down here without his Emex behind him had been weird. Made him feel naked.

His Emex had put its fist through an XRNs face. Of course that bastard Vaughn had anticipated that, and the XRN had had a little backup. Richard had blasted the crude backup chip it out of its chest but was too late to stop the rogue bot from ripping his Emex in half and throwing the torso at him. That had actually ended up saving his life, because gunfire suddenly passed through where he’d just been standing. By the time Richard crawled out from under the smoking, sparking torso of his partner, two other Emexes were down but all he’d sustained had been the graze to his arm.

“They’ve done their work,” he adds. “Now’s as good a time as any to let the ones we have left charge.”

Shao sighs. “You’re right. But I still need a break.” She turns to her working colleagues. 

“Who wants coffee?”

Arms are raised and preferences shouted. Richard breaks away from the group and walks back down the corridor. 

“Hey, Paul, want anything?”

“No thanks!”

The broken Emexes have been piled into one of the storerooms. These are the ones Rudy Lom has deemed still salvageable. Others, like Stahl’s, which was blown to pieces taking an RPG for her, have been swept away by the Roombas like so much scrap metal.

The bots are guarded by a rookie dead on their feet, who tries not to look like they’ve been falling asleep propped up against the wall when they spot Richard heading towards them.

“I’ll take care of this,” Richard tells them. “Coffee machine in the cafeteria should be working, go get yourself some and then get yourself home.”

The kid – they’re really nothing more than a kid really, Richard feels so old – scuttles off like a nervous rabbit and Richard steps into the room.

It takes a moment to find his Emex’s torso under two other deactivated bots. He grabs its wrist to pull it out and starts when the arm flexes under his hand.

“Detective Paul.”

“Huh. Shouldn’t you be deactivated?”

“My primary power source is still intact. I was merely hibernating.”

“Well that’s good,” Richard tells it, readjusting his grip on its wrist. “Because I may need your help getting you out from under here.”

“My other arm is malfunctioning, Detective. I suggest you pull on that one so that I may push with my functioning limb.”

“Right. You do that.” He walks around to the other side of the pile, and grabs the other arm. This one feels dead in his grip and the synthetic skin has been peeled off its fist like a glove. Despite the clearly inorganic metal endoskeleton being visible, the sight still makes Richard slightly sick to his stomach.

Some pushing, pulling and heaving later, he has his Emex propped up against a wall.

“How’re you doing?”

His Emex stares at him, but Richard’s used to it because that’s really all it can do with its eyes. It used to be creepy at first, having those lidless blue eyes watch him all the time. Now it actually feels comforting, knowing someone’s watching his back literally every second.

“You question is irrelevant. However,” the Emex says, looking down at its severed lower half, “I appear to be missing my legs.”

Richard pats its shoulder. “You’ll get them back, don’t worry.”

It looks back up at him, head tilted slightly as its visual sensors scan him. Probably trying to compute the meaning behind his sentimental human words. 

“I do not worry.”

“I know you don’t. So what’s your diagnosis? Anything else broken?”

“My left arm has ceased to function. However, my sensors detect an object concealed in my fist.”

“Really?” He drops to a crouch and reaches for the arm. “Your hand servos work?”

“Only the thumb.”

It takes some prying and pulling, and Richard ends up grabbing some detached plating to get the fist to open. But they finally manage it and a silvery cylinder rolls out on the floor.

“Synthetic soul identified.”

“Holy shit,” says Richard, picking it up and holding up the cylinder to the light. “You ripped it right out of its head.”

“It was the most effective way to prevent the XRN from terminating your life.”

As he squats there turning the soul over in his hand, an idea enters Richard’s head. It’s foolish, it’s dangerous, but his Emex almost got itself destroyed saving his life. And after tonight, watching those all too human looking XRNs storm the building, seeing Emexes throw themselves in front of their human partners to save their lives, catching sight of that idiot Kennex jumping in front of a gun for his damn bot… even Richard’s Emex has been more than just an MX for a while.

“Hey, you. Do you have enough power for a soul?”

“A synthetic soul?” If his Emex could blink in bemusement, it would. “We are not compatible.”

“Yes, you are. Slightly. Otherwise we won’t be having this mess with the XRNs. So,” he sits back on his haunches. “Can you power it?”

“With the remaining charge I have left I can power it for two point seven seven seconds sir.”

For a moment the sheer idiocy of what he’s about to do threatens to overwhelm him, but Richard pushes the feeling back. “All right. I’m going to turn you off for a minute.”

“Detective, what you are about to do is illegal.”

“Shut up.”

Despite its expressionless face, Richard can’t quite believe he’s only imagining the suspicion in its eyes. But its functioning arm remains motionless as he peels back the synth-skin covering its temple and triggers the kill switch.

Richard’s no engineer, let alone a cybernetics expert, but he’s well versed in the emergency patch-up of bots on the field, and Lom taught him a few tricks before Kennex started monopolizing him again. He’s forced to scavenge a bit from the other Emexes lying about, but all of them are deactivated and he tries to avoid the ones that are still mostly intact. Finally he manages to cobble some pieces together that would temporarily override the central processor, powering the synthetic soul instead.

He carefully slips the cylinder into the wire cradle he’s crafted for it, then after a second’s hesitation, turns his Emex on.

The expressionless face remains the same, but when the eyes light up, Richard knows something’s different.

“Detective Paul.”

“Hey.”

“Hey,” the Emex says back at him. This is so strange. The Emex is quiet for several seconds, as though it’s trying to formulate a question in its head. “You gave me a soul. Why?” 

Lights dance down the side of its face, but now they’re blue instead of the usual red. Richard absently reaches out, but quickly pulls his hand back when he notices the Emex’s eyes track his movements with something bordering curiosity in its eyes. Even with the soul the Emex has limited facial expressions due to the facial model it possesses, but somehow the eyes manage to convey it all. How does that work? They’re just optic sensors for fucks sake. Yet Richard feels like it’s peering into his very soul.

“I…” He runs a hand over his face and sighs. His knees ache from crouching for so long, so he sits down across from the Emex, crossing his legs. “I don’t know.”

“You have a concussion. You should seek medical treatment.”

“You have two minutes and you’re going to nag at me? Is that a subroutine? Kennex’s Dorian does that too.”

“Possibly,” says his Emex, and though its expression never changes, Richard detects the teasing note in its voice. It’s kind of creepy. Definitely weird. And unlike him it definitely has no qualms about touching him. Its functioning arm reaches out and it carefully pokes the area around his injury.

“The analgesic is wearing off. And you have a sixty-three point seven one chance of infection that increases by five percent every hour. Please get that looked at as soon as possible.”

A beat. “Or I’ll spit in your coffee.”

“Are you–” Jesus Christ, apparently mouthiness _is_ a subroutine for these things. “You’re a bot, you don’t even have spit.”

“I could ask Kennex.”

And Kennex would fucking do it. Richard spends a moment sputtering with outrage while blue lights pulse up and down the bots face. Like it’s laughing at him. Only with lights instead of sound.

Richard gathers himself. “Okay, enough bullshit,” he snaps. “I have some questions for you.”

“Since I only have one point two eight seconds left, shoot.”

“Do you want a name?”

More blue lights run up and down its cheek. This time it lasts long enough that it feels like an eternity, and for a moment Richard thinks he broke it, or worse, that the soul is corrupting its programming–

“Michael.”

“What?”

“You can call me Michael.”

Richard raises his eyebrows. “Did you just choose that of a database?”

“I like it.”

He shrugs. “Okay. Second ques–”

A finger is pressed to his lips, cutting him off. “No time,” says the bot it’s attached to. “I have one of my own.”

When it removes the finger, Richard reflexively licks his lips. He tastes soot and metal.

“Heyheyhey,” says the bot and he’s startled by it snapping its fingers in his face. “My question.”

“Uh, yes, yes, okay.” What would it ask him? Richard hopes its not something the about the meaning of life or some philosophical shit the DRN sometimes spouts, because he has no idea how to answer that sort of stuff.

“Will you keep me?”

Taken aback, he stumbles over a response. “W-whuh?”

“Will you keep me? Richard.”

The lights in its eyes are beginning to flicker. “Yes,” Richard says in a rush. “Yes, you’re still functioning, of course I’m keeping you.”

Even though it’s face remains as expressionless as ever, a corner of its mouth twitches as though it’s trying to smile. The lights down its cheek pulse. “Okay,” it says. “Good. Goooooo–“

The voice cuts out and the light in its eyes goes out. At the back of its neck, where Richard has connected it to the soul, sparks start flying.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he mutters, leaping to his feet and swatting at the wires until the cylinder flies out and rolls across the floor, smoking. It’s scorched black. Richard crushes it under his under the heel of his boot.

Carefully he removes the makeshift bypass and the extra wires, then he presses the synth-skin back into place as well as he can. When he trips the switch in his Emex’s temple it remains off. Completely depowered then.

He sighs deeply and rubs a hand across the back of his neck. Michael. Mike.

It takes a while to find Mike’s legs, but he manages it and arranges them next to Mike’s torso, leaving a note to Rudy. No way he’s letting Mike end up with some other bot’s legs.

In the conference room, Kennex is awake and bitching, hopping on one leg after the technicians who are trying to wheel Dorian away on a stretcher. The bot, now apparently at low charge, has started singing Bollywood songs at an ear-splitting level. Richard walks past just as his irate colleague launches into an insult-filled tirade that drowns out even Dorian’s Hindi. Maldonado is in her office, haggard and drawn, and surrounded by half a dozen coffee cups.

“Go home, Richard,” she says before he can even open his mouth.

“You look like you need some help.”

“I’ll need some help sedating John if he keeps up with the yelling but I’ll leave that to the paramedics. Get your arm and head looked at again and go home.”

“What about–“

“What I need here is some peace and quiet,” she snaps. She gets to her feet and pushes past him, striding down the hall until she’s all up in Kennex’s face.

“Shut up!” she bellows.

For a moment the only sound in the place is the eager beeping and whistling of the Roombas. Richard takes a moment to savor the shocked look on Kennex’s face before the detective overbalances on his only leg and fall on his ass. Then Dorian starts laughing.

The paramedics take that as a sign to rush into action. A team swoops in from where they’ve been lurking in a corner, and pounce upon the still dazed detective. As the technicians wheel Dorian away, Kennex is helped onto a second stretcher, the cop still ranting and raving, but at a much lower volume. Maldonado stalks back into her office with a tired but satisfied smirk on her face. 

Richard shakes his head. He’d grab his coat but it’s been shot to shreds. At least his phone is still working. Time to call his mama and tell her he’s still alive, then bed. Tomorrow he’ll make sure Rudy Lom puts Mike back together again.


End file.
